Misleading information about vaccines and COVID-19 on online platforms like Facebook is killing people, Joe Biden has said.
Speaking to reporters as he left the White House on Friday afternoon, the US president was asked if he had a message to platforms like the social media giant regarding the misleading or incorrect information that frequently appears on them about the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Biden responded: “They’re killing people. The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they’re killing people.”
On Thursday, a 22-page document from the US surgeon general called health-related misinformation a “serious public threat” and said a nationwide response was required.
Mirroring what is happening in the UK, COVID cases have tripled in the US over the past three weeks – and the number of people admitted to hospital and dying from it is rising, particularly among unvaccinated people.
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Officials in the US are worried by the trend and what they consider to be needless illness and death. And, also as in the UK, cases are expected to continue to rise in the coming weeks.
In the US, the rising numbers are being driven by infection among the more than 90 million eligible Americans who have yet to get their jabs.
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In many cases this is localised, depending on the uptake rates in specific areas. Four states with low vaccination rates made up 40% of new cases last week.
Aiming to boost uptake among young people, the White House has teamed up with the former Disney Channel star Olivia Rodrigo to encourage them to get vaccinated.
The 18-year-old singer met Mr Biden and his chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci this week to film videos for the White House’s social media channels and her own. She has more than 14 million followers on Instagram alone.
Researchers and politicians have repeatedly accused social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp of failing to clamp down on incorrect or misleading posts on its platforms, particularly during the pandemic.
Facebook spokesman Kevin McAlister said on Friday: “We will not be distracted by accusations which aren’t supported by the facts.
“The fact is that more than two billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet.”
Meanwhile, the latest NHS England figures show that by far the largest group of people in the UK to be hospitalised is those aged under 54 (52% of those admitted in the week up to 7 July, the latest date for which figures are available).
But whilst England gets ready to drop legally-enforced coronavirus restrictions on Monday, some states in America are re-imposing rules. Counties in California are among those again requiring everyone to wear masks while out in public, even if they’ve been fully vaccinated.
Much has been said about the students whose protests have gripped America this past week.
Their cause has been framed in polarising ways. A violent Hamas-sympathising mob? Or peace activists striving for equality?
Within a frenzied spectrum of views and noise, one young student sat down with me for a conversation.
Aidan Doyle, 21, is a philosophy and jazz double major at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).
He was arrested early on Thursday morning for being part of an encampment at the university.
He told Sky News he was shocked that the police arrested so many student protesters, despite not intervening in an attack on the protesters by a pro-Israeli group the day before.
He said his arrest had not deterred him from continuing his protest, which he likened to the Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s.
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Mr Doyle rejected the notion, from President Biden, that the protests are not peaceful.
“Graffiti, putting posters up, that’s all peaceful,” he said, commenting on the president’s statement from the White House.
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“I also think that President Biden needs to actually take some introspection and realise that maybe the reason so many of these protests are happening is partially due to him.”
Mr Doyle added: “Protests in general are part of the American spirit. They’re part of being an American. And if we were to just stand around in circles and sing and dance, and pretend everything was fine, then nothing would change and nobody would care at all.
“Part of a protest is causing disruption and causing at least a minor level of chaos that is, again, not violent but that actually disrupts things.”
He denied any accusations of antisemitism, but conceded there is a spectrum of opinion within the movement.
“If you’re going to criticise a movement, I think you have to look at the movement’s goals and their mission, not what fringe members of the group say or do.
“You have to actually look at what we say, what the organisers say, and what is in the mainstream, and what our mission and our goal is: the peace and prosperity of the Palestinian people.”
Asked if he believed in Israel’s right to exist as a country, he said: “I think Jewish sovereignty is incredible. I think it’s an amazing thing.”
He added: “I think that if there is a country for Jewish people that protects the Jewish people, that is of utmost importance, especially with the vile and rampant antisemitism that exists across the world that I see every day and that I try and combat as much as possible.
“But doing that and then simultaneously repressing another group of people, dehumanising them and brutalising them, then the question of whether your state has the right to exist becomes secondary.”
Students, charged and released with a date in court, are here now to collect their belongings. They’re missing bags, belts, shoes, all lost in the chaos of the night before.
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From the very heart of the protest encampment, our cameras had captured the chaos.
Officers moving in. Tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse. Stun grenades to disorientate.
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They were scenes which have stirred an already fevered debate about Israel and Gaza, yes, but about much more too. About America, about policing, and about free speech too.
President Biden said yesterday: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest.”
‘Wrong’ say the protesters. Their movement, they say, is the very essence of protest; of civil disobedience which is threaded through US college campus history.
They reject any notion that they are threatening or violent. Yet the deeply divisive history of the Israel-Palestine conflict ensures that the beholder will so often be offended by the actions of the other side.
It was the students perceived antisemitism through their pro-Palestinian slogans which had drawn a group of pro-Israel protesters to the encampment earlier in the week.
The chaos of that night was reflected in a statement by the university’s student radio station which has been covering every twist.
“Counter protestors used bear mace, professional-grade fireworks and clubs to brutalize hundreds of our peers, UCLA turned a blind eye. Police were not called until hours into the onslaught and stood aside for over an hour as counter-protestors enacted racial, physical and chemical violence,” the statement from the UCLA Radio Managerial team said.
Watching the clear-up after the nighttime police sweep of the protesters I spotted two people embracing. A young man and an older woman.
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Professor recalls violent arrest at protest
It turned out to be a thread of history. One was a student who’d been arrested the night before.
The other was a student from a past time. Diane Salinger had been at New York’s Columbia University in 1968, at protests which now form a key chapter in American history.
“I’m so proud of these people here. I’m so proud,” she told me.
“You know the civil unrest of the students back in ’68 and it continued for several years, it actually changed the course of the Vietnam War and hopefully this is going to do the same thing.”
But then, back at the police station, a conversation that hints at the wider challenges for America.
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‘Tom’ is a protester who wanted to remain anonymous – a graduate who feels politically deserted in his own country. For him, no government is better than any on offer.
“The problem with our system is that we can’t rely on the police, we can’t rely on the military to keep us safe.
“When we need to make our voices heard, we need to make them heard, and the only way to do that without being repressed is by keeping each other safe and I think that last night and the last few months have really exemplified that,” he told me.
These protests are about more than Gaza. They are aligning a spectrum of dissent.
A scuba dive boat captain has been jailed for four years for criminal negligence over a fire that killed 34 people.
Captain Jerry Boylan was also sentenced to three years supervised release by a federal judge in Los Angeles, California.
The blaze on the vessel named Conception in September 2019 was the deadliest maritime disaster in recent American history.
Boylan was found guilty of one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer last year.
The charge is a pre-Civil War statute, known colloquially as seaman’s manslaughter, and was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters.
In a sentencing memo, lawyers for Boylan – who is appealing – wrote: “While the loss of life here is staggering, there can be no dispute that Mr Boylan did not intend for anyone to die.
“Indeed, Mr Boylan lives with significant grief, remorse, and trauma as a result of the deaths of his passengers and crew.”
The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day voyage, sinking less than 30 metres from the shore.
Thirty-three passengers and a crew member died, trapped below deck.